NEW YORK — For the past 19 years, Jennifer Nilsen and her family have boarded a bus from Staten Island to Lower Manhattan on September 11th for the reading of the names.
“Twenty years feels like yesterday," she says. "The emptiness in my heart, it still hurts. It’s broken. They broke our family.”
The pain is still fresh for Nilsen, whose husband and partner of 13 years was killed on 9/11. Troy Nilsen would commute every morning from Staten Island to the World Trade Center. He worked at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 103rd floor of Tower One. Jennifer was getting her sons ready for school when she heard the news.
“We watched in horror. And then when the building collapsed, I knew he was gone,” she remembers. “I knew when it started getting dark that he wasn’t coming home, but I didn’t want to admit it to myself.”
What You Need To Know
- Troy Nilsen worked for Cantor Fitzegerald on the 103rd floor of the North Tower
- The Nilsens take a bus from Staten Island to Lower Manhattan every year with other families
- Troy's widow says losing her husband still feels like it happened yesterday
Days after the attack, a photo of a firefighter from inside the stairwell of the North Tower appeared on the cover of the magazine "The Mirror." Jennifer says she has no doubt in her mind that the man standing next to the firefighter was Troy.
“That was him in the article in the Friday after September 11th,” Jennifer said. “This firefighter made it out barely before the building collapsed. And this was my husband.”
Troy is among hundreds of missing victims whose remains were never found.
As the years pass, Jennifer says she will continue to keep her husband’s spirit alive to ensure their family never forgets the kind of man he was.
“I close my eyes and I can see his hardy smile and laugh,” Jennifer said. “And he loved his children. He loved his family. That was his life.”
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